Designations Congruent with Things: Chapter 20

“When Tiffany designs and builds an underwater Turing Machine, please be sure to inform me,” Hermann says.

Chapter warnings: Realistic depictions of neurological, physical, and bureaucratic trauma. War. Grief. Death. Mental illness. Regular illness. Panic attacks. 

Text iteration: Witching hour.

Additional notes: None.

Chapter 20

Hermann looks up at the pale gray sky and tries to decide whether he should be carrying an umbrella.

Probably.

The cloud cover is total and homogenous and high, a gray-white that is hard to look at without squinting.

“This is so stupid,” Newton mutters.

The clouds look like the vanguard of some approaching storm—

“Why are we doing this?” Newton asks.

The clouds look the forward edge of an advancing front. The wind is perhaps colder than it was a few days ago. He’s lived in maritime climates for so long now that he loses track of the seasons. It takes him a moment to remember it is winter, rather than autumn. 

“Are you ignoring me?”  Newton asks.

Hermann pulls his coat closer, staring fixedly at the stream of cars in front of their building. 

“You’re ignoring me,” Newton decides. “That’s great. That’s just great. Real mature, Hermann. Yup. Really mature.”

Hermann has decided that ignoring Newton is the better part of valor at the moment. 

“You know there’s a weather advisory about the directionality of this wind. We’re probably getting thyroid cancer right now,” Newton continues, driving the toe of one boot absently into a crack in the sidewalk. “This is pointless. Literally pointless. It’s also weird. It’s very weird. It’s weird even by our contemporary standards. It’s weird in the context of the past two weeks. Weird.”  Newton shivers in the brisk and likely faintly radioactive wind blowing briskly off the bay.

This is too much to silently suffer. 

“Since when has ‘weirdness’ ever precluded you from doing anything?” Hermann snaps, trying to put most of his hood between himself and the directional vector of the wind. 

“Hermann. You bought a car,” Newton snaps right back, making a short lived and fruitless attempt to control his hair during a particularly strong gust of wind. 

“I’m aware of that.” 

“Do you not want to show me your car?” Newton asks. “Is your car deformed in some way? Do you think I’m going to ridicule you and/or your car for some reason? Look, I know my track record is not stellar when it comes to, say, hypothetically, respecting your choice of profession, leisure activities, culinary pursuits, musical proclivities, literary tastes, or fashion sense, but I can personally guarantee you that literally no matter what your car looks like, I will say ‘nice car, Dr. Gottlieb,’ and leave it at that. You can show me your car, Hermann. You can show me your car—I will be so nice about it, if only so I don’t have to stand in radioactive wind waiting for a cab. Seriously. Cross my heart.”    

“Will you shut up?” Hermann asks him politely.

“You are the worst,” Newton says, as a black, self-driving cab with blue plates pulls up in front of them. He leans forward to open the door of the car, swings it wide, and makes an expansive gesture.

Hermann glares at him and gets in, sliding laterally along faux leather seats that smell of lemoned sterility. He turns off voice recognition and inputs their destination on a touch screen mounted where the back of the driver’s seat would be in a non-autonomous vehicle. 

Newton shuts the door, buckles his seatbelt on his third attempt, and then says, “so you bought a weird car.” 

“My car is not ‘weird’,” Hermann replies stiffly, as the cab pulls away from the curb. 

“Relax dude, how bad could it be, really? I mean, first of all, I don’t actually care that much about cars. In the grand ranked list of ‘Stuff Newton Geiszler Finds Cool’—“ Newton breaks off, clapping one hand to his head.

Hermann rolls his eyes.

“Oh god,” Newton says theatrically. “Why do I do this to myself? How do I do this to myself? I’m so stupid. I think I’m carsick. I’m carsick and brainsick and we have literally been in this cab for twenty seconds. I simultaneously do and don’t care about your car. Caring is winning though,” he finishes weakly, giving Hermann an intolerably pathetic look of pure, wounded exhortation. “Please show me your car.”

Hermann feels a spike of self-reproach that is in no way warranted and has been triggered only by the shameless emotional appeal that Newton is, certainly, consciously using to further his own ends.

His “ends” are that he wants to see your car, you dick, his brain says, taking Newton’s side in Newton’s precise tone, using Newton’s particular vulgate. 

Hermann finds this to be appallingly unfair. 

“I’m sure I’ll be unable to avoid it,” he says. 

“So that’s a yes, then?” Newton replies, glancing over at Hermann, his fingers pressing against his left temple. “That’s a ‘yes, Newt, super-friend, drift-partner, I’ll show you my car, I’ll do it today’?”

“I think that’s an extremely optimistic interpretation of what I said,” Hermann replies. 

“Did you buy a neohipster car? Fancy and silent and semi-elite and one with nature? Did you buy an embarrassingly classic car, like a high-end Volvo from the 1970s? Did you—”

“No,” Hermann says, unwilling to listen to an endless concatenation of cars he has not purchased. “My vehicle and you occupy entirely separate fields of existence, Newton. Please do not concern yourself with my car. Ever.”

“But I care,” Newton replies, sounding both carsick and defeated one hand over his eyes. “I really want to know.”

“You know literally everything else about me,” Hermann snaps.

Newton pulls off his glasses and hands them to Hermann.

Hermann takes them, removes his own sunglasses from his pocket, and hands them to Newton. 

“And so I care,” Newton says, settling shades over closed eyes. “A lot. There is literally no person in the world who cares about your car more than I do, other than Actual You, I guess, and the part of me that’s you, which I differentiate both from the part of me that’s me and Actual You, plus also the kids, who generally wouldn’t take an interest in cars, but who are, against all odds, a little curious.” 

“The kids?” Hermann repeats.

“The fish,” Newton says after a protracted pause, looking out the window at a world that must consist entirely of a nauseating blur. “The fish kids. Tiffany really wants to know.” 

“Tiffany has a brain the size of a pin.” 

“I’m sure that’s what all the kaiju say about humans. Said. Except. You know. Thought. And not pins, but—”

“When Tiffany designs and builds an underwater Turing Machine, please be sure to inform me,” Hermann says. “I will then apologize for slighting her intelligence. Until such a time—”

“Hey,” Newton snaps. “Hey hey hey hey hey.”

Hermann raises his eyebrows.

“Tiffany is extremely intelligent.”

“For a goldfish,” Hermann says. 

 “Yes for a goldfish. What other kind of intelligent is she going to be, dude? She is a goldfish. She can’t help that. I’m just saying that for a goldfish she’s very freaking smart, okay? Descartes, the fish, has the processing power of a pile of rocks, to my endless disappointment. He’s got a good heart though. Can you not be a jerk to our fish? God.”

“I bought them a needlessly sophisticated underwater habitat,” Hermann says.

“For which they thank you,” Newton replies. “That doesn’t mean you have free rein to disparage their cognitive capacity.”

“I will cease disparaging your fish when you stop inventing hypothetical criticisms for my totally unobjectionablecar,” Hermann replies. 

“Fine,” Newton says. 

“Fine,” Hermann replies. 

“Fine,” Newton says again. 

They both stare fixedly out their respective cab windows on principle before Hermann looks back at Newton and asks, in a manner that is not at all conciliatory, “does a metric for assessing goldfish intelligence even exist?”

“Not that I’m aware of, no,” Newton replies mildly. “She follows my finger though, so.” 

“Ah,” Hermann says. “Splendid. You must be so proud.” 

“Shut up,” Newton says, glancing over at him with a faint smile. “Is Hypothetical Rain really worth this Actual Cab Ride? Because it’s long.” 

“I suspect yes,” Hermann says. “She has, thus far, been absolutely discreet when it comes to the information we’ve shared with her. I don’t particularly care for the idea of confiding to a second person the full extent of our actions in Hong Kong.” 

“Myeah,” Newton replies, sounding abruptly exhausted. 

As well he might. 

Hermann spends a great deal of the car ride trying not to talk to Newton in the vain hope that the other man will, possibly, fall asleep.

This does not happen. 

Instead, Newton spends ninety minutes free-associating on the topics of fish training, behavioral genetics, historical famines, the current state of American agriculture (a topic on which he knows very little), global warming, and terraforming, before taking a brief and abrupt break that Hermann suspects is a relatively well concealed episode of acute anxiety. Following this, he then resumes with a mystifying soliloquy regarding his deep personal identification with Wesley Crusher before segueing into the Alcubierre drive, colonization as a biological imperative but an ethical minefield, altruism in slime molds, game theory, John von Neumann, Pascal’s Wager, and Pragmatism as a discipline. 

Hermann comments appropriately while watching the slowly shifting landscape around Oblivion Bay. He tries to remember if Newton had been quite so consistently interesting before drifting, before EPIC Rapport, and before he’d nearly ruined his brain saving the world. 

I look good in a sweater, his brain says, impersonating his colleague with total precision. That doesn’t hurt. 

Hermann looks away from the Bay Bridge to glare at Newton in abrupt alarm. 

The other man stops speaking mid-sentence, hands frozen mid-gesture, and says, “what?” in an overtly defensive tone. “It’s not like I’m a radical empiricist, dude, I mean, I have some standards.” 

“What?” Hermann replies, unsettled and mystified.

“Um,” Newton replies. “Look, I get that you are deeply horrified by the idea of thoughts not perfectly mirroring reality, but really—”

“Are you trying to mentally converse with me?” Hermann demands, eyeing him suspiciously.

Newton stares at him silently for the span of several seconds before saying, “um, mentally?”

Hermann is going to take that as a ‘no’.

“I was trying to verbally converse with you,” Newton says, offensively slowly. “The operative word being trying. I’ve been talking, aloud, for a while now, in case you’ve lost track. I’ve spent the last five minutes doing my best to have a discussion with you about Pragmatism but, honestly dude, you didn’t seem all that interested, and I was doing something like eighty percent of the conversational work. So, yeah but no. To summarize, I was not trying to mentally converse with you because I was trying to actually converse with you.”  Newton adjusts his borrowed sunglasses. “Um, why do you ask though?”

“What were you thinking about?” Hermann asks, evading Newton’s question.

“Schiller?”  Newton says. “His criticism of formal logic? Instrumentalism? Your brain? The way you’re not so secretly a Platonist? Like, one half-step down the mystical ladder from Gödel? I’m a Formalist, by the way, like a normal person, and if, if, Hermann, I’m just a little bit obsessed with the Platonist worldview right now it’s not my fault. Also I was thinking about dinner, a little bit, maybe? Also, sort of vivisection? That’s a pretty common thought undertone for me these days because yeah. But I’m pretty sure that, just now, most of what was going on underneath the Pragmatism was me thinking about dinner. You make pretty good spätzle and I was kind of wondering if that might happen again. Soon. Tonight, maybe? Look, you’re making a freaked out face right about now, which I really don’t think is warranted. I don’t know if this reassures you, but I do think this is a real phenomenon that’s going on. The thought exchange thing. The SPECTER Effect? Don’t freak out. You look a little bit freaked out, dude, you’re—”

“You weren’t thinking about your shirt?”  Hermann interrupts.

“My shirt?” Newton says slowly, clearly confused, looking down at his maroon sweater in an unimpressed manner. “No. No, Hermann, I was not thinking about my shirt. I’m not actually that excited about this shirt, if you want to know. I try not to think about it. Would it kill you to not buy me sweaters?”

Unfortunately, all of this sounds extremely plausible.

“Never mind,” Hermann says. 

“Um,” Newton says. “You can’t just interrupt me in the middle of this whole thing I was doing with Pragmatism as a discipline and how it relates to the philosophy of mathematics and ask me if I’m invading your brain with thoughts about my shirt and then say ‘never mind’. That doesn’t work for me.”

Hermann says nothing.

“You want to ah—talk about anything, dude?”

Hermann shoots his colleague a withering look. “No.”

“What’s that look? I can be sensitive. Were you getting exogenous sweater hate?” Newton asks.

No, Hermann thinks, I was, in fact, suffering endogenous sweater appreciation of unknown origins.

“Something like that,” Hermann says vaguely. 

“Maybe it’s just the part of you that’s me disapproving of the part of me that’s you. By which I mean the part of me that’s wearing this sweater. Where did you even get this, Hermann? No. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

“You look extremely respectable.” 

“I look like a nerd who goes yachting on the weekends.”

“No one has gone yachting for half a decade,” Hermann says dryly. 

“Well maybe you wouldn’t have intrusive negative thoughts about my wardrobe if you would just buy me something a little less Gottliebian and a little more Geiszlerian.” 

“I don’t plan on making a habit of buying you clothing,” Hermann replies acidly. “Order something tasteless online.”

“Meh,” Newton says, looking away. “Backlit screens, man.” 

“Then you’ll have to suffer in the short term,” Hermann says. 

“Well I don’t know about suffering,” Newton says. “There’s a certain appeal to the academic aesthetic I suppose—“ he breaks off with a curiously distressed sound and tips his head back against the seat. 

“Are you all right?” Hermann asks him.

“Yeah dude, we’re just treading close to cognitive dissonance territory, again, and I’m already slightly more than slightly carsick, so I don’t think I can manage to not throw up in this cab if you make me think too much about my wardrobe and how I feel about it—the point is that I know I’m not supposed to like sweaters and furthermore I do not like them, Hermann, so it’s just easier if I don’t have to face the fact that I do, kind of a little bit, like them? But not—”

“Stop,” Hermann says. “Think of—” He breaks off when he cannot immediately come up with anything.

“Yeah, exactly,” Newton snaps.

“Descartes?” Hermann offers. It’s low hanging fruit, but it gets the job done. 

“I love that guy,” Newton whispers.

Hermann reaches over to pat him awkwardly on the shoulder. “I’m aware.” 

Newton smiles faintly.

As they approach UCSF’s medical center, the Wall dominates the view out the cab window, running like a stone ribbon along the line of the coast. Hovering above it are the dynamic specs of circling sea birds. 

Hermann prefers those birds at a distance.

Newton watches the Wall in consistently inconsistent intervals, as if it is watching him back.

It is a relief when the cab pulls to a stop in front of a white building housing Hypothetical Rain’s clinic. 

Actual Coral’s clinic. 

Dr. McClure’s clinic. 

Hermann swipes his credit card and steps out of the cab and into a stiff breeze that carries with it the smell of the sea. He turns back, extending a hand to Newton. 

Newton gives him an affronted look and says, “get out of here, dude.”

“Will you simply be reasonable?” Hermann asks. 

“You’re the unreasonable one,” Newton says, struggling free of the car with poor grace and stabilizing himself on its metal frame. “Everyone knows that. You’re the one freaking out about sweaters while I’m trying to have a civilized conversation.”

Hermann has not wasted much thought on Newton’s coordination, balance, or proprioception over the past nine years. But, after dragging the man through airports and hospitals and diners and away from one very traumatized real estate agent, after considering Newton’s postulation that his current problems stem from some sort of relative dopaminergic deficit, and after being stepped on, he finds himself significantly more interested in his colleague’s motor control, or lack thereof. 

He suspects that Newton is unlikely to be particularly steady following a ninety-minute, cognitively-dissonant cab ride. 

Newton shuts the cab door at the same moment Hermann gets a good grip on his elbow, which is fortunate, since, once all its doors are shut, the cab pulls away from the curb. 

Hermann yanks the other man back as he starts to go with it. 

Newton pulls off his sunglasses, squinting under the soft light of the gray-white sky. He shoots Hermann a look laced with a familiar blend of gratitude and irritation, and says, “swap.”

Hermann pulls Newton’s glasses out of his pocket and hands them back to him. 

“I’m suave,” Newton says, squinting, likely referring to his narrowly averted close encounter with the asphalt of the road.

“Terribly suave,” Hermann agrees, repocketing his sunglasses. 

The wait to see Dr. McClure is not long, though it is somewhat uncomfortable, with Newton endlessly fidgeting and the clear and constant staring directed their way by a young woman near the opposite wall. 

Hermann is sure she recognizes them; Newton is sure she’s trying to figure out what animal died to make the lining of Hermann’s coat.

When they are called back, Newton whispers, “it’s synthetic,” to her as he passes.

“What is?” she asks, flushing.

“Everything,” Newton says.

“Oh my god that’s so deep,” she replies, evidently extremely impressed.

Hermann suffers a brief but intense interval of wistful horror, imagining Newton engaging in any way, shape, or form with the current media frenzy surrounding Ms. Mori and Mr. Becket. He’s certain global culture would take decades to recover.

“What was that?” Newton whispers, evidently amused at the girl’s reaction, as a nurse in pink scrubs shows them to a room. 

“That was you abusing your fame,” Hermann says.

“Fame? I got the impression it was more like obscure notoriety,” Newton replies.

“Not really,” the nurse says, turning to look back over her shoulder, her hair fanning as she twists. 

“Wait, what?” Newton replies, cocking his head, glancing at her and then back at Hermann, managing to trip over the featureless tile floor as he does so. 

Both Hermann and the nurse reach out to right him. 

“I’m legit famous?” Newton asks. 

“Have you been living under a rock?” The nurse smiles at him.

“Well, a little bit, maybe, yeah,” Newton replies. 

“With good reason,” Hermann snarls, giving the nurse his most menacing look. 

She looks back at him, abruptly anxious.

Newton looks over at him, taken aback.

Hermann reflects that he may have overreacted slightly. 

“We—Dr. McClure—there was a staff meeting,” the nurse says, “we won’t say anything. Not to the press, if that’s what you—we would never—”

“Chill,” Newton says, giving her a smile, brief and askew, as he squints to read her nametag. “Uh, Sarah. We’re cool. Dr. Gottlieb just hates nice people. That’s all. It’s kind of his shtick.” 

Hermann glares at him. 

“Um, okay,” Sarah says, gesturing briefly toward an open doorway, and backing away. “The doctor will be right with you.”

“Thank you,” Newton calls after her with a theatrical pointedness, his gaze fixed on Hermann. 

Hermann ignores him, precedes him into the room, removes his coat, and seats himself in one of the three available chairs. 

Newton stays on his feet, paces back and forth in front of the exam table, spends a moment watching an evolving starscape that serves as the screen lock on the wall-mounted computer, examines an otoscope, and then, finally, turns to Hermann, saying,  “was that really necessary, dude?”

Yes, Hermann thinks.

“No,” Hermann says, “but I have no particular inclination to discuss our portrayal by the American media at the present moment.” 

“Well I hear that,” Newton replies. “Do I ever. But it sounds like it might not be all bad. Are we legit famous?”

I am moderately famous, Hermann thinks, while you are fast becoming an international obsession.

“When compared to Ms. Mori and Mr. Becket we hardly register,” he says, managing to avoid an outright lie.

“Well they’re ridiculously pretty,” Newton says, “so that makes sense to me.” 

Newton spends a moment examining the wall-mounted ophthalmoscope, while Hermann spends a moment examining his own motivations regarding the verbal misdirection he has been lately performing.

The list of things he is going to have to communicate to Newton at some point is growing increasingly long:  the true extent of the man’s snowballing fame, the resurgence of The Superconducting Supercolliders, the extremely beneficial effect that the recent merchandising and re-release of their albums have had on Newton’s finances, the fact that Hermann implied to the entire Berkeley Mathematics Department that they are romantically involved, the emergence of that same hypothesis in the popular press, Hermann’s extravagant car, the fact that the email account Newton has never checked is full of invitations for interviews, photo shoots, promotional endorsements, and job offers. 

He’s not sure whether he’s been trying to protect Newton, or himself. 

“Do you ever—“ Newton begins, clicking through settings on the wall-mounted ophthalmoscope.

Whatever Newton is about to ask is cut short by the arrival of Hypothetical Rain. Dr. McClure. Her hair is escaping from a sloppy knot at the back of her head. Her white coat is unbuttoned, and around the hemline of her skirt, a blue dragon snakes in an embroidered curl.

Hermann looks away.

“You break it, you buy it, man,” she says by way of greeting, eyeing Newton, who is still toying with her ophthalmoscope. “Hi, Dr. G.” 

“Hello,” Hermann says, shooting Newton a look that he hopes clearly communicates ‘desist’ in command form. 

“Oh please,” Newton says, replacing the instrument with a quiet click. “I could build you one of these things.” 

“Not one I’d want to use though,” Dr. McClure says.

“Touché,” Newton replies, taking a seat beside Hermann.

“Please excuse him,” Hermann says dryly. “He has no conceptual understanding of property.”

“Oh? Oh, really, Hermann? Because if anyone needs to be apologized for, I’m pretty sure it’s you. Because the very nice nurse who was too terrified of you to take our vital signs—”

“I heard about that,” Dr. McClure says mildly.

“Did you?” Newton continues, with feigned polite surprise, pressing an open hand to his chest. “Did you really?” 

Hermann can feel the pressure of the other man’s gaze on the side of his head, but he refuses to turn. On principle. 

“Newt,” Dr. McClure says. “Chill.”

Prior to this exact moment, Hermann had been certain it would be impossible for his esteem for Dr. McClure to increase. He is pleased to find himself incorrect. 

“What?” Newton replies, in open incredulity. “I’m chill. I’m literally always perfectly chill. Absolutely chill. Zero Kelvin.” 

“Sure,” Dr. McClure says, seating herself in front of her wall computer. “So, what’s new? I’m assuming you’d have let me know about anything serious, but just to be clear, no one’s been seizing over the past week, right?”

“Nope,” Newton says. 

Hermann shakes his head.

“Nosebleeds?”

“Continuing apace,” Hermann says. 

“For both of you?” Dr. McClure asks, eyeing Newton with entirely justified and perspicacious suspicion. 

“Yeah,” Newton replies, elongating the word into something that demands clarification. “Kind of briskly apace?”

“He’s had fifteen episodes of epistaxis,” Hermann says.

“Total, or within the past five days?” Dr. McClure asks.

“The former,” Hermann says, while Newton simultaneously says, “the latter.”

Hermann looks at him.

“You’re lowballing it a little bit,” Newton says, apologetically.

Hermann’s look hardens into something approaching a glare.

“What. You go shopping,” Newton replies defensively. “You also sleep. I’m sorry I haven’t kept a tally on the fridge or something, man.”

“Either way, it’s not really ideal,” Dr. McClure says, before Hermann can respond to that piece of provocative idiocy. “I’m still sticking to my irritated-capillary-bed theory since angiography didn’t show any vascular abnormalities. How much would you say you’re bleeding, volume-wise?” 

“Blood volume is notoriously hard to quantify,” Newton says dismissively. 

“Do a lot of blood volume quantification, do you?”  Dr. McClure asks.

“Historically, Rain, yes, for your information—”

“Not much,” Hermann says. “I doubt he loses more than fifteen milliliters at any given time.”

“Does that sound about right?” Dr. McClure asks, looking at Newton.

“Sure,” Newton replies. “It pretty much stops right away with pressure, if I catch it.” 

“This is like pulling teeth, guys,” Dr. McClure says. “If you ‘catch it’? Look, I want a total volume of estimated blood loss over the past week from each of you so I can decide whether you need to be worked up for anemia, because you’re not looking fabulous to me, friends, neither of you.”  Her eyes fix on Hermann, and she says “Dr. G, go. Give me a number.”

“Less than one hundred ccs,” Hermann says shortly. 

“Thank you,” she says. “Newt?”

“This really isn’t accurate,” Newton replies. “In any way.”   

“Okay,” Dr. McClure says. “I’m with you dude, one hundred percent. In vivo, surrogate endpoints suck. You can have some bloodwork instead.”

“Well I would prefer that,” Newton replies, with aggressive poise. “I think we should both have bloodwork.”

“I disagree,” Hermann says, narrowing his eyes at his colleague. 

“Me too,” Dr. McClure says, her eyes fixed on her wall-mounted terminal as she finishes inputing orders. “Dr. G seems like he’s a guy with a pretty dece skill set when it comes to volumetric estimation, so.”  She shrugs.

“Quite,” Hermann agrees.

Newton sighs.

“EEG-wise, you guys are still looking like trainwrecks,” Dr. McClure says, angling her wall mounted terminal slightly so that they can see a screen full of voltage fluctuations over time in a multiplicity of leads. “These are from your last visit. You’re both normalizing relative to where you were when I first saw you, so hopefully that trend continues. How are the headaches?”

“Improving,” Hermann says. 

“Meh,” Newton says. “Not getting worse.”

“How’s the raging insomnia?” Dr. McClure asks. 

“Nearly intolerable,” Hermann replies. 

“Fine,” Newton says. 

“He sleeps approximately once every three nights,” Hermann says dryly. “It’s taking a significant toll on his psychological state.” 

“Um, thank you for that particular elaboration, Hermann,” Newton snaps, “thank you so much.”  He shifts his position leaning forward, flexing his left foot as if he is about to stand, before pushing back abruptly and crossing his arms.

Hermann feels a simultaneous spike of guilt and sympathy.

“If you want to talk about psychological states,” Newton begins, looking meaningfully at Hermann, his tone dangerously and affectedly offhand, “then perhaps we should discuss—”

“Stop,“ Hermann snaps, his sympathy instantly vanishing. “Stop speaking immediately.”

“Guys,” Dr. McClure says. “Newt. Seriously man, you’ve gotta tell me the relevant stuff. That’s the whole point of having a doctor. You’re like the most rad guy in the history of rad guys and insomnia is a character flaw since exactly never, so just relax.”

“I’m relaxed.” Newton looks like he’s is about to hyperventilate. “So I’m not sleeping that well. Biologically, this is understandable. Biologically, it makes sense. There was a short window there, where, yeah, I was a little worried I might burn through all my neurotransmitters and die in a psychotic haze, but that didn’t happen and I don’t think it will. I don’t think insomnia is a thing that necessarily portends cognitive doom, you know? It’s just a thing. I’ve always had it. Now I have it more. It’s normal. Sleeping is boring. I’m pretty sure it’s normal. We bothhave this problem. It’s not even a problem, really, it’s just a thing. It’s just a feature of the post-drift state. Of ourpost-drift state. EPIC Rapport is, by its nature, a state of neural disequilibrium, I’m pretty sure. We’ve been neurobiologically perturbed, yes, but our sleep cycles will normalize, probably, we just have to wait.”

Dr. McClure spends a moment in silent contemplation, studying the pair of them and then says, “True. If you want to wait, let your brains do their thing, that’s fine with me. Your judgment regarding your current situation probably trumps anyone else’s. I can’t think of anyone more scientifically qualified to weigh in on how the heck we should deal with your current situation than you yourself. I mean, in part, that’s why you guys are here, right?” Dr. McClure shrugs. “Because I’ll let you intellectually boss me around?”

“Yes,” Newton snaps, aggressive and entitled. “Yes exactly.”

“Charming,” Hermann says, rolling his eyes. “No. We’re here because you were highly recommended by an acquaintance of my father’s, and we find your rigorous methodology and cautiously empirical approach to be to our tastes.”

“Thanks Dr. G, you’re a class act,” Dr. McClure says. “But, look, Dr. Geiszler, my point is I’m willing to try waiting this out, but I’m also fine with say, pharmacologically retweaking your GABA levels so that it’s possible for you to sleep more than once every three days.”

Newton looks at her cautiously, clearly undecided.

Hermann heroically refrains from dropping to his knees on the white tiled floor and begging the man to agree to her proposition.

“Fine,” Newton says, to Hermann’s nearly infinite relief. “Yes. Good. Tweak away, I guess.”

“Rad,” Dr. McClure says, turning back to her screen. She spends a moment typing before a small square of paper emerges from the printer built into her keyboard. “Round one,” she says, signing the prescription and passing it to Newton. 

His colleague squints at it for a moment, then passes the paper to him. Hermann glances at it, folds it in half, and pockets it.

“Okay,” Dr. McClure says, shifting in her seat, looking away from her terminal with a kind of gravitas that strikes a primitive chord of civilization from the bottom layer of Hermann’s forebrain. “So yesterday,” she says, picking up the stack of files in front of her, “I received your medical records, such as they are.” 

“Ah,” Newton says, eyeing the files with obvious antipathy. 

“Such as they are?” Hermann repeats.

“Yours are intact,” Dr. McClure says, looking at him. “They consist of the MRI, bloodwork, and the physical you received from the PPDC medical director. There’s nothing in there that I didn’t already know, other than your unilateral elevated intraocular pressures post your drift and the fact that you disclosed to the medical director your eye injury was secondary to an unsuccessful drift calibration with Dr. Geiszler.”

Hermann shrugs.

“They believed that?” Dr. McClure asks. “That you were incompatible?”

“Have you met us?” Newton asks dryly.

“Yes,” she replies, raising her eyebrows at him. “And, again, I ask: they believed that?”

“Previously, we had a different interpersonal dynamic,” Hermann explains.

“Did we though?” Newton says, squinting at him skeptically. “I’m not sure about that. Memories are a little less hardwired than you think they are.”

“I’m certain we did,” Hermann says, not at all certain. 

“Well I’m pretty sure we only argue less because you view me as a melting snowflake and, post-drift, I infected you with my empirical tendencies a little bit.”

“What?” Hermann says.

“Okay so moving on,” Dr. McClure says speaking over him with all the polite professionalism she has at her disposal, “Dr. Geiszler’s records are pretty tough to interpret.”

“Shocking,” Hermann mutters.

“Will you just,” Newton murmurs back.

“Over ninety percent of what they sent me has been redacted,” Dr. McClure continues, opening the file. “I’ve got a set of four clinical progress notes that look medically sloppy, and are heavily weighted toward what I think might be scientific asides, one of which I think you might have actually written.”  Dr. McClure pauses for a moment, looking at Newton, waiting for clarification of some kind. When none is forthcoming, she continues. “I have five decontextualized EEGs, three of which look like scarier versions of your current baseline, one which clearly represents the initiation and generalization of a seizure, and one of which must be some kind of mechanical or operator error because it looks so hideous.”

Hermann winces, not at all certain that Dr. McClure’s conjecture is correct, his thoughts slowing under the pressure of anxious anticipation. 

“Um, yeah,” Newton says sounding breathless. “Okay. Interesting. Useful.”

“I also know what they gave you, pharmacologically speaking. Day one, you got nothing. Day two, you got a whole mess of anti-seizure meds around two in the afternoon in conjunction with some kind of procedure being performed which is, unfortunately, totally redacted. They kept you on those meds overnight and, from what it looks like, a variant of the same procedure was performed on day three—” Dr. McClure breaks off abruptly.

Hermann looks over at Newton, who is unnaturally still, unnaturally pale, his gaze fixed on nothing. Some sixth sense, a fortuitous post-drift mental trapping, makes Hermann reach out and clamp his hand down on the other man’s shoulder at nearly the same instant Newton makes an attempt to bolt for the door. 

Hermann successfully prevents him from rising. 

Dr. McClure says nothing, watching Newton with a commendably neutral expression that Hermann wishes he could emulate. She glances briefly at Hermann and then looks away, untangling a strand of dark hair from earrings made of blue sea glass.

“You are fine,” Hermann says quietly, loosening his grip on Newton’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” Newton says, his left hand coming to his face as his nose begins to bleed. He angles his head back and extends his free hand in Hermann’s direction. “Obviously.”

Hermann fishes for a handkerchief, but Hypothetical Rain beats him to it, pulling a set of tissues from a package in her pocket and putting them in Newton’s open hand. 

“Exhalation against a closed glottis is going to get you every time, dude,” she says. 

“Don’t I know it,” Newton replies, tipping his head forward, pinching his nose shut. 

“You okay?” she asks. 

Hermann finally pulls his handkerchief free from the other ephemera in his pocket and hands it to Newton, who immediately swaps it for the wad of nearly saturated tissue he’s currently holding to his face.

“Yeah,” Newton replies, with an affectedly casual shrug.

“Does this kind of thing happen a lot?” Dr. McClure asks.

“Not really,” Newton says dryly. “I go whole tens of minutes without quietly panicking and bleeding from my face, so yeah.” 

“Ugh,” Dr. McClure says. “That sounds like the worst.”

“It’s not the worst,” Newton says. “The worst is, like, you know, civilization ends as humans are dethroned from their place at the top of the food chain and everyone dies in unmitigated terror. It’s not great though. For me. Admittedly. I could always be crazier or have more epilepsy, though, so hey.”

“Let’s not invite potential negative outcomes by listing them,” Hermann says acidly.

Newton pats his knee in what is likely supposed to be a comforting manner with a blood soaked tissue. “I think you have a causality problem there, dude.”

“Ugh,” Hermann says, disgusted.

“How are you still grossed out by my blood?” Newton asks, throwing his used tissue at the biohazard bin against the opposite wall and missing by a wide margin. “I bleed on you or your stuff at least once per day.”

“I do not have a causality problem,” Hermann hisses. 

“Nope,” Newton says agreeably, “no causality problems around here. No sir.” 

“So,” Dr. McClure says, breaking into what is likely to turn into an inappropriately timed argument on determinism. “I probably should have asked you if you want to hear this stuff.”  She waves the file she is holding in a tight circle. “In retrospect, that would have been classy of me.”

“Yeah, but immaterial,” Newton says, adjusting his glasses, “because I would have said yes.”

“And how about if I asked you now?” Dr. McClure says.

“I’d say that I’m going to go wash my face for oh, I don’t know, a while, and my next of kin emergency contact colleague life partner roommate can fill me in later.” 

Hermann is not at all sure he wants this particular assignment.

“So, just to be clear, you want me to talk about the contents of your medical file without you,” Dr. McClure says slowly, “but with Dr. Gottlieb?”

“Yup,” Newton replies, standing, one hand on the wall. “That is exactly what I want.” 

“I think it would be better—” Dr. McClure begins, half rising as well.

Hermann can sense a well-intentioned conflict self-organizing out of ethical pressures and psychological imperatives. He catches the doctor’s eye and shakes his head. 

She lowers herself back into her chair, looking at him uncertainly. 

“Do you?” Newton says, from Hermann’s peripheral vision, opening the door and backing through it as he speaks. “Great. Interesting. Good times, kind of. Well, whatever. If you need me to sign a waiver or something, I’ll be literally anywhere but right here.”    

Hermann doesn’t move, doesn’t turn; he simply continues to look at Hypothetical Rain, willing her to let the other man leave, unopposed. 

The door closes with a controlled click. 

Dr. McClure sits silently in poised agitation, as if she is contemplating the branching of an invisible and intricate decision tree.

“I believe,” Hermann says after a moment, intending to make things easier for her, “that he may already know what is in that file.”

Dr. McClure looks back at him and raises a single, pierced eyebrow. “He says he doesn’t remember any of it.”

“He implies he remembers nothing,” Hermann counters. “I don’t believe he’s ever definitively stated it.”

“At our second visit I asked him straight up to tell me what happened to him, and he said he couldn’t. That he was totally unable to give a reliable account,” she replies.

“Yes,” Hermann agrees. “But into the word ‘reliable,’ read reproducible, read accurate, read precise.”

Dr. McClure sighs. “He hasn’t talked to you about it?” she asks. 

“Not directly, no.”  Hermann says. “I am, somewhat—I am extremely—concerned, actually, that he may have drifted a third time, alone, with some fragment of alien tissue,” Hermann says. “I like to think that he would have known better than to attempt any such thing, but—”  he raises a hand, palm up, to indicate that which he does not feel capable of articulating. 

“Yeah,” Dr. McClure says, leafing through the file, flipping printed pages full of redacted text. “There’s very little available information here. They provided me only with hard copies. No electronic files.”

“How prudent of them,” Hermann says. “I’m flattered by their fear of my computational abilities. What were you able to deduce?”

“I’ve got three days of records,” Dr. McClure says. “Everything of substance is redacted other than the types and timing of the medications they gave him. I correlated the timing of pharmacologic intervention with what I could gather from the redacted text to put together that he had a seizure on day two in conjunction with some kind of invasive procedure. It looks like they pre-loaded him with anticonvulsants and tried the same or a similar procedure again on day three, but I don’t think their pre-loading plan worked from a seizure prophylaxis perspective. They had to break another one on the morning of day three.”

“May I?” Hermann asks, extending a hand for the file. 

Wordlessly, Dr. McClure passes it to him. 

It is fifteen pages long, and nearly entirely useless. 

He pages through meaningless blocks of redacted text, conjunctions and punctuation and articles and linking verbs maddeningly left in place, but anything of substance removed. In addition to redacted notes, the medication record, and the EEGs, there are photocopies of three separate consent forms, the procedures they cover redacted, Newton’s familiar signature scrawled in fluid pen at the bottom of each page. 

“His handwriting was fine going in,” Dr. McClure murmurs, tracing the curl of Newton’s characteristically ostentatious paraph with the edge of a blue fingernail. “Whereas it’s not, currently. This makes me think that his fine motor troubles started after what happened during these three days.”    

“Yes,” Hermann agrees. “Possibly,” he amends, thinking of the twenty-four hours Newton had spent with an obvious resting tremor following his first drift.

“This,” Dr. McClure says, tapping Newton’s signature, “and the medication record are the most useful things in here.”

“Perhaps,” Hermann says. “You said you thought he might have written part of this?”

“Next page,” Dr. McClure says, with a tilt of her chin.

Hermann flips to the following page to see a document called, ‘XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXX.’

XX XXX opinion XX XXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX née XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXX subject, it is extremely apparent that the XXXXXXXXX XX XXX XXXXXXXX XXX XXXXXXXX by the Vladivostok team is X XXXXXX XXX precise for XX to withstand for purposes of ruling out XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXX the XXXXX XXXXXXXXX. The stated goal of the current procedure is the correlation of XX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX EEG XXXXXXXX with XXXXXXXX from an intact XXXXX XXXXXXXX as a surrogate endpoint to provide reasonable freedom from suspicion of XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX. With regards to going forward, I therefore formally advise and also agree to XXX XXX of XX XXXXXXXX XXX, constructed from XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX, recovered from XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX, in conjunction with an aggressive pre-procedure regimen of XXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XX XXXXXXX the prevention of X XXXXXXX that might result in the termination of this procedure. (XXX XX. XXXXXXXX?)  XXXX XXXXXX XXXXX XXX XXX XXXXXXXXXX XX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXXXX X XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XX XXXXXXXX EEG readings XXX XXX XXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXXX-XXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXX. Although there is no way to formally rule out XXXXX XXXXXXXXX, it will provide strong circumstantial support for the XXXXXX XX XXXXXXXX XX XX XXXXX XX XXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XX X relatively XXXXXXXXXXX form. Presuming there isn’t evidence of XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX. Should that be the case, further testing will, of course, need to ensue. On a personal note, X XXXX XXXX XXXXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXX, XXXXXX XXXXXXXXX XX XXXXX XXXXXXX X XXXXX XXXXX XXX XXXXX X XXXXXX XXX XXXX and this XXXX XXX XX.

Signed,
XXXXXX XXXXXXXX, XX.X.
X-XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXX
XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXXXXX

“I’m not certain this is him, but—”

“It’s him,” Hermann cuts her off. He can practically hear his colleague dictating an inadvisable memo to the ether.

“Are you getting anything out of this?” Dr. McClure asks, shifting her chair closer to him. 

“Yes,” Hermann says, scanning along the line. “In the opinion of this investigator née willing experimental test subject, it is extremely apparent that the [something] by the Vladivostok team is a little too precise for me to withstand for purposes of ruling out [something] with the kaiju anteverse. Probably that last is mental continuity.”

“Rad,” Dr. McClure says, clearly impressed. “Drifting. All it’s cracked up to be, I guess.” 

“That, or ten years of listening to the man complain in faux bureaucratic argot,” Hermann replies dryly before continuing. “The stated goal of the current procedure is the correlation of my [something] baseline EEG readings with readings from an intact—” he breaks off, grimacing in frustration, trying to make the words into ‘kaiju brain’ but failing, until he says, “tissue fragment,” with a feeling of vindicated despair.

“That’s less rad,” Dr. McClure says.

“Agreed,” Hermann whispers. He can’t parse the rest of the sentence, so he moves on. “With regards to going forward, I therefore formally advise and also agree to—” he breaks off, momentarily stuck, intellectually casting about, as he tries to bury his horrified response to what he’s reading and view this as Newton would view it. Had viewed it.

They, the external team, had tried something Newton had felt ‘too precise’ to be workable, whatever that meant, and so the man would therefore have—done what?

Nothing comes to him.

Dr. McClure shifts in her seat. 

You inventive, clairvoyant, and utterly miserable excuse for a scientist, Hermann thinks, staring at the page. What did you do?

Some reagents, after being left on a shelf for a year will, counterintuitively, work better in vivo, his brain replies in Newton’s most provoking tone of consciously understated narcissism.

What are you getting at? Hermann snaps at himself.

I built an interface out of garbage. Out of some rig no one wanted because it was obsolete and lacked even the most basic safety features, his brain replies. How precise could my voltage calibrations really have been? 

Hermann can remember throwing a spectrum analyzer to the floor with hands that weren’t his hands and thinking,screw it, I’ll approximate, in a haze of mental urgency. 

“—the use of my original rig,” Hermann snarls between clenched teeth in angry revelation, “constructed from [some euphemism for trash], recovered from downtown Hong Kong in conjunction with an aggressive pre-procedure regimen of—” he breaks off, looking at Dr. McClure.

“Could be ‘anti-epileptic medications’,” she says, pointing at a block of Xs, “to [something] the prevention of a seizure that might result in the termination of this procedure,” she finishes. 

Hermann scans the rest of the paragraph, neither inclined nor able to parse it, his mind in a strange state of ataraxy. He understands how the paragraph must end, understands that he holds the institutional justification for an experiment that does nothing more than document a predictable deviation from an electrophysiologic baseline for the sake of ticking off a checkbox on form somewhere in answer to the question: “Is Dr. Newton Geiszler a threat to humanity as a species, yes or no?” 

If he lets you spend three days investigating this question in his prefrontal cortex, then the answer is no, by default, his brain snarls. 

He flips through the subsequent pages, full of redacted medical text written by individuals whose brains he has not shared. 

Dr. McClure shifts some pages and stares silently at the most abnormal of the EEG tracings. 

“His third drift,” Hermann says, “one assumes.”

“Yes,” she murmurs. “I’m surprised this didn’t kill him.” 

“Me too,” he replies. “I spent months telling him it would.” 

“Do you want a copy?” Dr. McClure asks him, indicating the file in his hands with her gaze.

He spends a silent interval picturing himself sitting in his new office at UC Berkeley, pouring over the redacted file for days, slowly reconstructing the complete text of Newton Geiszler’s first and only capitulation to institutional pressures, assigning names to redacted anonymity, peeling back the layers of everything that happened during those three days while he was meters away. 

All of this has a righteously masochistic appeal. 

But none of it will tell him what he really wants to know. 

What happens to a fraction of a hive mind? his thoughts echo, sounding like no one, sounding like everyone, sounding like a desperate blend in triplicate. 

“No,” he says, meaning yes, meaning yes give it to me immediately, I will take it and I will compile a list of careers to destroy and people to despise and questions to scream at Newton at inopportune moments when he least expects it and might answer me. “No, I don’t want a copy.”

“So he, er, to summarize,” Dr. McClure says, “we think he had two seizures while hooked up to two different stereotactic drift interfaces—one from Vladivostok, one that he built. We think the second one happened mid-drift. We think that your former employers decided that he isn’t secretly now in league with the kaiju based on circumstantial EEG evidence. We think they let him go because of that, and also because no one with any medical training who saw this,” she says, tracing a line with one blue nail, “would have ever let it happen again.” 

“Yes,” Hermann whispers, looking at the lines of maxed out voltage readings on the paper in Hypothetical Rain’s hands. “Yes, that’s what we think.”

“It’s better,” Dr. McClure says, her hands running restlessly over the edges of the tracings she holds, “It’s better to know, I think, Dr. G. These things. It’s better that we know.”

“Yes,” he says. “I’m certain you’re right. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll—” he gestures helplessly toward the door. 

“Yeah, go give him a hug or something,” Dr. McClure says, turning back to the wall-mounted computer. “Jeez. I’ll square you guys up with the front desk and make sure the EEG suite is ready.” 

Hermann exits the room, intending to take a moment to collect himself, but instead, his gaze snaps to the nurses’ station, where Newton is seated in a chair with a cup of orange juice in his hand, a blood pressure cuff around his arm, and a pulse oximeter clipped to his finger.

A young woman in pink scrubs is seated next to Newton, watching him fixedly.

It the combination of his own surprise, his own alarm, and her fixed gaze, it must be, that draws a similar fixation from Hermann, from the predatory parts of his mind that have all classified her as a threat.

But it doesn’t last.

Because he is a human with self control, not a cloned alien war machine. 

Because Newton shifts forward in his chair, blocking her from Hermann’s view. 

Because she’s speaking, and he can hear her.

“So what do you do?” she asks Newton. “For a living, I mean.”

Hermann shakes his head, managing to snap himself free of any remaining predatory instincts. He realizes he’s stopped short just in front of the examination room door. 

Newton is looking at him.

Hermann nods briefly.

“I’m not really sure,” Newton says, his gaze snapping back to the nurse. “Right now? Nothing, kind of. I’m currently unemployed. I have this thing going where I reinvent whole disciplines of thought that I find comforting, but it’s extremely pointless, actually.” 

“You look a whole lot like one of those guys who saved the world.” 

“I do look a little bit like one of those guys. We also have the same name. Totally unrelated though.”

“Uh huh,” the nurse agrees slowly. 

Newton looks up as he approaches, and Hermann can now see what inspired the close scrutiny of the woman he’s speaking with. He looks overtly ill—his skin is pale and subtly damp with sweat. His orange juice betrays a high frequency tremor. 

“Hey man,” Newton says. 

Hermann has the urge to slap him for being such a unique, blazing paragon of idealistic idiocy, has the urge to just freeze the man in carbonite until he can sort out everything that’s wrong with his own head so that he can, possibly, one day, do the right thing where Newton is concerned, like give the man a hug or a kitten or whatever it is that might actually improve his life, rather than just dragging him to neurology appointments and pressuring him into finding a job. Maybe if he could just deal with this later it wouldn’t be so hard for both of them at the same time and he wouldn’t have the urge to raze his former place of employment to the ground, wouldn’t make Star Wars analogies when he was upset, for pity’s sake, wouldn’t stand here, silently, like a useless excuse for a human being, in the hallway, while some anonymous nurse tries to distract Dr. Newton Geiszler from whatever it is that’s currently making him look like a particularly brittle piece of used-up chalk. 

“Are you okay?” Newton asks, looking up at him, looking pained, looking like a stiff shove would send him straight into hours of unconsciousness. 

Hermann drops into an empty chair next to his colleague, rests his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands and tries not to have an emotional breakdown in the hallway of Hypothetical Rain’s afternoon neurology clinic. 

He despises Newton.

He despises Newton so much.

He despises him, with his easy concern, his total abandon, the way he navigates the world with all that he is on full and constant display, the way he doesn’t care about anyone’s opinion, even measured, considered, correct, and professional opinions about what should and should not be attempted using extremely dangerous equipment requiring the insertion of electrodes into brains. He despises Newton for telling anonymous nurses that he is ‘unemployed’, for creating a  flawed and misleading picture of himself with only the most surface trace of obligatory, deprecating bitterness, because that bitterness is expected, because the man expects it of himself, not because he really feels it, not like Hermann does, not with a very real need for a vengeance he’s never going to get because it’s not morally justifiable, but nevertheless someone should pay for this, someone should, someone other than Newton, who is too stupid to know that what happened to him is horrible. Too stupid to ever stop trying to do whatever it is that he’s trying to do. He despises watching this, he despises being asked about his own state of mind because he can’t stand Newton and his offensively short turnaround time, his ability to snap straight from panic into concern, straight from outrage to amusement, he’s hated that rapid plasticity for a decade in all its varied incarnations—interface redesign in a week, data analysis in a night, paperwork completion in an afternoon, construction of powerpoint presentations on flights, the writing of grants in spare time, the processing of alien tissue before degradation sets in when no one else can get it to bloody work, because the man cuts corners but only the right ones, his ability to upgrade an obsolete interface in an afternoon and transport it to the middle of a street in the rain, in the dark, and have it still work. How dare he. How dare he, how dare he ask after Hermann’s well being. How dare he, because of course Hermann is ‘okay’, he’s been ‘okay’ this entire time, it’s Newton who is not ‘okay’, Newton. Newton is the one who is not ‘okay’, who has never been ‘okay’ and is now less ‘okay’ than ‘not okay’ and one of these days Hermann is going to start screaming at him and never stop until his vocal chords snap under the continued, unremitting pressure of all the things he hasn’t, can’t, and won’t say because they’re confusing and inappropriate and a post-drift epiphenomenon that’s likely not even real, presuming ‘reality’ as a concept exists at all, which, of course, it does. Hopefully.

Newton claps him on the shoulder, once, gently, and then starts rubbing his back.

Hermann will shortly murder him.

But for now, he will satisfy himself with not weeping.

“So, tough week for you guys, I guess,” the nurse says. 

“Meh,” Newton says philosophically. “We’re on an upswing. Probably we are. It’s a good thing we’re not those world-saving guys though, let me tell you.”

Hermann smiles faintly into his hands for no reason. 

“Graham cracker?” the nurse asks. 

“Yes, I would love a graham cracker right about now,” Newton says. “Thank you.”    

Hermann decides he has mastered himself sufficiently to straighten up. He looks over at Newton, who has given the nurse his half-consumed orange juice in exchange for a graham cracker. The other man is leaning back in his chair, entirely exhausted, looking at Hermann through half-lidded eyes. 

“You look terrible,” Hermann says.

Newton takes a bite of his graham cracker. “You look so great though,” he replies. “I almost forget you’re living in a glass house. Also, say hello to the nice lady who prevented me from concussing myself on the floor. Florence, Dr. Gottlieb. Dr. Gottlieb, Florence. She’s a human.”

“Um,” Florence says, extending a hand,  “My name is Liz. I am a human, though. I assume you are too?”

Hermann shakes her hand and nods. “Pleased to meet you.”   

Florence smiles nervously at him. Perhaps she has been talking to Sarah. 

“Don’t assume, Previously Florence,” Newton says. “Dr. Gottlieb is pretty weird.”

“Will you shut up,” Hermann says, with disappointingly low-grade ire. 

“So how do you two know one another?” the nurse asks, looking at Hermann.

“We’re colleagues,” Hermann says.

“Longstanding mutual nemeses,” Newton says, speaking over him, “is really a better description than ‘colleagues’.”

“You said you were unemployed,” the nurse replies, glancing back at Newt. 

“Currently? Yes,” Newton says. “Always? No. This guy here teaches math to college students and makes them cry. Or he will be doing that. Next week.”

“Newt,” Dr. McClure calls from somewhere behind Hermann. “What’s the deal?”

Hermann twists to see her walking over white tile, her white coat unbuttoned, pushing her hair out of her face. 

“They just thought I needed this, man,” Newton says, gesturing vaguely at the blood pressure cuff currently strapped to his arm. “I don’t know, I mean I just—“ Newton trails off, leaning his head back against the wall. “I got waylaid. By Florence. Liz. This very nice person in pink.”        

“He was holding a blood-soaked handkerchief and looking a little vasovagal,” says the nurse. 

“Hey. I was looking fine,” Newton says, emphatic, managing to retain his dignity while at the same time accepting a second graham cracker. 

Hermann is not quite sure how Newton manages to be simultaneously entirely insufferable and offensively appealing. 

He has never been quite sure about that. 

“That is a nice sweater,” the nurse says.

“Don’t even start with me, Florence,” Newt replies. 

“Newt,” Dr. McClure says, coming to stand beside Hermann. “You look wiped, dude.”

“Wiped?”  Newton repeats, in a parody of didactic disappointment. “You didn’t even go to medical school, did you. Admit it. I thought about it, you know? Medical school, I mean. But I was told that they would beat all the coolness out of me. With human bones, possibly. How did you survive?”

“Um,” Dr. McClure says. “You think I’m cool?” 

“In no universe should you ever be allowed to be a medical doctor,” Hermann says dryly.

“Outrageously cool,” Newton replies. 

Dr. McClure smiles at him, then glances at Hermann, her eyes dark and serious, before turning to the nurse, mouthing, “did he actually hit the deck?”

Newton shoots the doctor an unimpressed look, then glances at Hermann in mild vexation.

Hermann shrugs at him in a conciliatory, well-what-did-you-expect way. 

“No,” Previously Florence replies.

“You have earned yourself some extra blood work,” Dr. McClure says, turning back to Newton.

“Why?”

“Why?” Dr. McClure echoes. “Don’t be a loser. You look terrible, that’s why.”

“God,” Newton says. “Starfleet called, Captain Kirk needs a medical officer with the worst beside manner ever. Did my doctor just call me a loser? I pay you, Hypothetical Rain. I pay you. Or the government does. Or the government would have—actually—I’m unemployed? I have no idea. Do I even have health insurance? Are you giving me the healthcare equivalent of free breakfast?”

“You have health insurance,” Hermann says, not particularly inclined to inform Newton that he currently has health insurance courtesy of UC Berkeley’s progressive policy which extends to common-law domestic partners, because it had been extremely convenient and also necessary to obtain medical coverage for his colleague, and the current situation is not atypical in any way, he just hasn’t gotten around to informing Newton that he did this, because he’s been very busy. 

Very busy.

“My name isn’t Rain,” Dr. McClure says. “You do know that, right?”

“Meh,” Newton replies. 

“Are you going to faint if you stand up?”  Dr. McClure asks.

“No,” Newton says irritably. “There is a zero percent chance of that.”

Hermann exchanges a skeptical look with Previously Florence.

“Then get out of here, dude,” Dr. McClure says. “Get your EEG, give Vlad the phlebotomy tech some blood—”

“His name is Steven,” the nurse says, in overt disapproval.

“I knew that,” Dr. McClure says.

“He really looks like a Vlad though,” Newton whispers to Previously Florence. “Think about it.”

“Will you control yourself,” Hermann hisses. 

“Yeah, so give Steven the phelebotomy tech some blood,” Dr. McClure continues, recovering her poise, “and then take a nap, or ten in a row. Call me if you can’t sleep. Don’t wait until you start having insomnia-induced hallucinations.”

“I would never,” Newton says.

Hermann says nothing to him.

Nothing of substance. 

Not as they leave the building, his hand clamped around Newton’s elbow. Not during the cab ride around the bay, beneath a pale sky. Not during the preparation of dinner, which Newton spends in another distracting and ongoing battle with chopsticks. Not while they eat, discussing the Isaac Newton versus Gottfried Leibniz Prioritätsstreit with an inappropriately sordid enthusiasm. 

They don’t speak of the file until after the sun goes down and, invisible, the Wall loses whatever terrible, silent appeal it holds for Newton. They don’t speak of the file until the man settles down at the table, absently chewing the distal border of a thumbnail as he reads, and Hermann moves to sit opposite him, behind the shield of his open laptop.

“So she told you all of it?” Newton asks, without looking up.

“The file was almost entirely redacted,” Hermann replies, staring at his email client without seeing it.

“Ah,” Newton says. “That makes sense.”   

“If you would like to talk about it—” Hermann says, into the quiet air between them. 

“No,” Newton replies. 

Hermann nods.

He spends an uncounted span of minutes staring unseeing at his keyboard, trying to read Newton’s thoughts, trying to grasp the SPECTER Effect with both hands, trying to pry open the lid on his colleague’s consciousness, trying to understand what it is that’s happened to Newton, to understand what happens to a fraction of a hive mind, but he gets nothing—nothing but silence—even his own thoughts compress into quietness beneath the pressure of his own willpower, consistently and clearly and constantly applied.

Newton gets up and makes Hermann the tea he hadn’t known he’d wanted, setting it down next to him with a quiet click.

Hermann stares at it.

“What?” Newton says.

Hermann shuts his laptop, holds up a finger, and reaches across the table to pull Newton’s book from beneath his hands.

“I was reading that,” Newton says, squinting at him. 

“You shouldn’t be reading in this kind of light,” Hermann says dismissively. “You’re—“ he breaks off, checking the page number of Calculus Wars. “One hundred and fifteen pages in?” 

“Yes,” Newton says cautiously, as if he suspects he is about to be ridiculed and is marshaling his defenses. “You bought me that book, you know. I didn’t pick it. It’s like the trashy airport book of eighteenth century intellectual priority disputes but I—“

Hermann pays him no mind, flips to the one hundred and fifty-fifth page, and interrupts him with, “what is the first word on page one hundred and fifty fife?”

“If you’re trying to test my memory you’ve got a conceptual flaw there, dude,” Newton says. 

"I am not trying to test your memory, please keep up,” Hermann says, looking pointedly down at the book he is holding and then back at Newton.

Newton leans forward, his forearms coming to rest against the edge of the table. He grins, brief and bright and intent. “It was the tea, wasn’t it? I knew you wanted it.”

“I’m waiting,” Hermann says.

“Okay,” Newton says. “Okay okay okay okay. Think really hard. Loudly. Think really loudly.” 

Hermann raises his eyebrows.

They stare intently at one another for an uncounted interval in a silent attempt to bridge a cognitive span that may be inherently unbridgeable in the absence of a physical interface.

“Trick question, it’s a graph,” Newton says in a rapid rush. 

“Newton,” Hermann says.

“What?”

“That’s the word,” Hermann clarifies. “Newton. As in, Isaac.”    

“That’s a terrible word to pick, dude, what are you thinking? Talk about confounding variables,” the other man says. “I want a re-do.”

Hermann flips to a new page.